Tag: jimmy martin

One of my favorite releases of the past several years has been Old Friends Get Together from J.D. Crowe, Doyle Lawson, and Paul Williams. The successful album served as a de facto tribute to the Gospel music of Jimmy Martin, as all were members of Jimmy’s Sunny […]

How much memorabilia would a prominent bluegrass promoter and talent agent accumulate in a lifetime? If you live near Nashville you have a chance to find out this week when Lance LeRoy holds a moving sale. LeRoy is the founder of the Lancer Agency, and […]

Happy Birthday America! 238 years ago, our founding fathers declared our independence from Great Britain and gave birth to a new nation. The land of the free and the home of the brave proved that a nation for the people and by the people could […]

Memoriams to James Alan Shelton continue to come in, focusing mostly on what a good friend and fine fellow he was, aside from his obvious skills as a guitarist. This one comes from Mississippian Larry Wallace, who played banjo with Jimmy Martin from 1991 to […]

The rebel grandson of the great, Hank Williams, Hank Williams III (Hank 3) is one of the most unique artists touring today. While he loves country music, he’s not afraid to push the envelope with hardcore rock music. “Country is in my blood, even though […]

Here’s the fourth installment in Bobby Osborne’s set of video reminiscences which he calls Road To The Opry. We pick up the story in the early 1950s. Bobby was playing with the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, and Larry Richardson had decided to leave the group.

Today is St. Patrick’s Day, and whether you prefer a green beer or a Shamrock Shake (like myself), you have to appreciate some good drinking songs on one of the year’s biggest days for alcohol consumption. Because the number of bluegrass drinking songs is higher […]

Paul Williams, one of the most dynamic and enduring entertainers in bluegrass, has decided to call it a day. Having written a handful of classic songs over his career, which has involved 60 years running the roads, no one is more deserving of a long […]

The Twelve Days of Christmas A song most people love to hate. It is never picked when church groups go Christmas caroling. Whether it’s because it’s too long or because no one knows all of the words is irrelevant. If it were a person, it […]

This is the next installment in a fun new series in which we ask bluegrass music personalities, some famous, some not so well known, about some of their interests as well as about the music that they love. Our guest today is Ronnie Prevette, who worked for […]

The word “counterintuitive” has definitely earned its place among the most overused words and phrases of the last 10 years, like “frankly” (the favorite of politicians, and that may cover the last 20 years), “twerk,” “going forward,” “at the end of the day,” and “rock […]

I have to declare upfront that I had a peek at an early draft of this book. Also, over the years (from about 1981), I have watched Reid gather together the building materials that have gone towards the writing of The Music of the Stanley Brothers. […]

Blue Mafia really caught my attention with their 2013 debut CD, My Cold Heart. It boasted of three strong lead singers, and a powerful new songwriting voice, plus the sort of dynamic guitar playing that sets the tracks on fire. Over the past two years, the […]

In debates surrounding regional chauvinism in the roots of bluegrass music, New York’s Gibson Brothers are often posited as modern exemplars of a sound that isn’t dominated by cultural and musical conventions of the American south. It’s true that their music is based on a brother […]

Largely thanks to cheerful love songs like Corn, Lonely Ends Where Love Begins, and That’s Just Me Loving You, husband and wife duo Darin and Brooke Aldridge have become known as the “Sweethearts of Bluegrass.” While there are a few love songs on their latest […]

Church in the Wildwood isn’t a recently written song. It was actually composed in 1857 by a young music teacher named William S Pitts as a result of a June visit to Bradford, Iowa. Pitts was on a stagecoach ride that stopped at the town. […]

Blue Highway’s Wayne Taylor started playing guitar when he was 13. Due to some health problems he spent a couple years in a wheelchair. Taylor had a cousin who played and he showed him a couple chords and he took it from there. After recovering […]

This year, I promise not to fire my bandmate, Pete. Don’t laugh. Okay, laugh. Every couple of years I terminate him. It’s because we are such good friends, know each other inside-out, and love each other like the closest of siblings – and when we […]

Today marks Doyle Lawson’s 52nd year in bluegrass music. After serving stints with Jimmy Martin, J.D. Crowe, and the Country Gentlemen, Doyle has spent the past thirty-six years leading his own band, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver. Quicksilver has been one of the consistent and influential […]

It’s hard to keep a good man down in bluegrass music (although we all do like to be lonesome now and then), and radio broadcaster Larry Roberts is a prime example of that. Roberts has been a DJ for almost thirty years, and for the […]

Bluegrass is sometimes viewed as music for old fogies. The emphasis on tradition, the lack of electric instruments, the sheer lonesomeness of it all – it’s not Katy Perry or Justin Beiber, that’s for sure. In the past several years, however, it seems like more […]

When we think of “radio voices,” smooth, rich, polished tones come to mind – think Casey Kasem. Broadcaster Jim Fisher was a little surprised when, years ago, someone told him that his voice was well-suited for the radio. As he tells it, he was emceeing […]